BP Reviews in London, UK Area

Pros

- Highly respective of diversity
 - Senior Management very open to mentoring and advice
 - Highly skilled colleagues
 - Great benefits and pension package
 - Immense diversity in job options available - because of huge geographical spread so each role is like a new job
 - A genuinely good company with genuinely good people
 - Superb work-life balance

Cons

- slothful HR (but thats the case everywhere!)
 - Policies and Processes keep changing before there is a chance to settle down
 - High reliance on consultants to come up with a new strategy everytime a new leader of a division comes in. Consultants dont put their money where their mouth is. So things keep changing every few years (read: above comment)
 - Focus on 'change' to showcase leadership rather than 'silent running' and 'stability'
 - slow salary growth after joining (my peers in consulting firms get 20% pa raises compared to 4-6% I get)
 - Negative impression of the company after the Macondo incident (though I strongly blv that BP is a genuinely good company - much better than its other supermajor peers)

Advice to Senior Management

Focus on stability and silent running rather than constant change everytime some new divisional head comes in. Build internal capability rather than recruiting expensive consultants to direct strategy. After the consultants are gone, there is little time to implement suggestions before a new wave of consultants come in and change everything again.

Pros

Great place for a newcomer or a relatively recent undergrad - lots of training opportunities, lots of development opportunities, and all around access to solid corporate best practices to learn all the things one shouldn't do and how to do things well. As a large firm, it does spend its resources and money on developing people and all in all, it is a great starting point for ones career...

Cons

After about 10 years or so, even as a high-potential candidate, one often runs into lack of development opportunities, mismatch with salary expectations, lack of opportunities, lack of flexibility (work hours, work locations). In recent years, there has been an outflow of senior level female leaders from the company - see some of the reasons above.

Advice to Senior Management

Benchmark your salaries to market - a bit difficult to convince people these days based on benefit package alone (which may be revised 100+ times before one receives it - e.g. retirement) and question whether selling the company based on its brand is a smart thing to do these days. Encourage young talent and find a way to retain it for more than 10 years.

Pros

You get to work on projects with real scale, e.g, Rumalia, Iraq and Azerbaijan - that are not available outside the supermajors (Shell, Exxon etc). People are willing to teach / mentor junior staff, and the work / life balance is excellent. Pay is okay but not as good as small oil companies.

Cons

It takes a long while to get anywhere, with little opportunity for rapid progression. To get on you've probably got to spend some time working in some fairly unpleasant places. In recent years you get lot less control over what type of jobs you want to do than you did, say, 5 years ago.

Advice to Senior Management

Encourage entrepreneurship and creativity amongst staff. Value technical contributors more than networkers. Pay better, with better reward for genuine achievement. Have higher standards of assessment.

Pros

Good training opportunities; opportunity to travel; good guidance for recent graduates out of university; ability to change teams/departments with relative ease.

Cons

Might take too long to leave the 3-year training program (called Challenge). Working in /for some regions is better than others.

Advice to Senior Management

No advice - I would say just instill more humbleness/humility in the corporate culture so as to avoid further Deep Horizon-gates!

Pros

Good pay and benefits if you are a permanant member of staff, free lunch for example and nice office environment to work in.

Cons

Could be quite a dull place to be at times, whether this is because of the surrounds or the people I am not sure but the days at BP seem to drag like no other place I have worked!

Advice to Senior Management

Could be quite a dull place to be at times, whether this is because of the surrounds or the people I am not sure but the days at BP seem to drag like no other place I have worked!

Pros

Big name
Great work life balance
Reasonably secure
Lots of modern technology
Strong emphasis on staff wellbeing and office safety

Cons

Very inefficient
Many many layers of non value adding management
Tendancy to reward incompetence with promotions
Most able staff are generally contractors
Very little hard work ethic outside of operations teams

Advice to Senior Management

Cut down on the endless levels of management (programme managers, stage managers, delivery managers, capability managers, project managers, etc) and think more like a bank.
Reward good staff through improved packages, and try to cut out the 'who you know' and silly networking culture for promotions and opportunities within the business.

Pros

good company,good procedures and practices

Cons

too political,english,normans scottish in the rat race for positions they dont deserve.Wrong people on on job designations

Advice to Senior Management

concentrate on opertional safety another disaster is not far away.

Pros

Large and diverse company
Opportunities for international assignments
Good work/life balance
Flexible working available
Friendly collegues and operative work environment

Cons

Performance appraisal are not taken serious
Career advancement is mainly a function of your networking ability
Most roles have very little "actual engineering" as these are done by vendors

Advice to Senior Management

There seems to be a gap in middle level of technical ability. There are very highly skilled older experts, followed by graduate level competency (regardless of actual post).
To resolve this, the checking and evaluating technical competencies should formalized.
Clearer technical career pathways provided and incentivised by a "competitive rate of advancement" in salary and level.

Pros

BP is a good place to work with a strong commitment to fairness, diversity and ethical conduct.
BP offers plenty of opportunity for professional development.
Senior management are generally of a very high calibre.

Cons

BP is prone to constant reorganisation, management changes causing a loss of focus, continuity and delivery. This makes it an unstable work environment.
There is little respect for work life balance and no consideration for the impact on individuals when determining new tasks or initiatives.
The diversity agenda has a significant influence on HR-related decisions and will often have greater importance than merit.

Advice to Senior Management

Constant reorganisation impedes delivery. Don't allow people to use reorganisations as a substitute for demonstrating delivery with the structure and people already in place. Keep senior leaders in the same role for 7-10 years so they get to know the real performers and are also made fully accountable for the results of their actions.

Pros

Global Company, Multicultural environment, opportunities for growth, opportunity for variety of roles in many countries, flexibility of movement across segments ie upstream, downstream and midstream. excellent work/life balance

Cons

In most cases, you are as good as your manager thinks ... , very hierachical, limited employee empowerment,

Advice to Senior Management

reduce the hierarchy if you can....implement 360 degrees feedback so your managers & team leaders can get a feel of what their direct reports feel/think, suggestions for improvements etc